YouTube Video Awards — YouTube will announce on Monday the launch of "YouTube Video Awards" - a late attempt to honor the best-user generated videos of 2006. The seven categories are Most Inspirational, Most Creative, Best Series, Best Comedy, Musician of the Year, Best Commentary and "Most Adorable Video Ever."

And the YouTube award goes to... NEW YORK (AP) — Lonelygirl15, OK Go and other YouTube sensations will get an opportunity to walk down a virtual red carpet. — The video-sharing Web site announced Monday that it will hold the first YouTube Video Awards to recognize the best-user created videos of 2006.

SCOOP: Apollo public alpha available later tonight — I'm about to get on a plane for Ajax World, but I just got word that the public alpha of Apollo is going to drop on the Adobe Labs site tonight. The current build is targeted mostly at Flex developers but has enough HTML support …

Public Alpha of Apollo Debuts on Adobe Labs — For immediate release — New Technology Enables Web Developers to Extend RIAs to the Desktop — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced that the first public alpha version of Apollo is now available for developers on Adobe Labs.

Stolen Identities Sold Cheap on the Black Market — Recovering from identity theft can take years and cost thousands of dollars. But how much is your identity worth to the thieves who sell it to other fraudsters? Turns out, less than the price of two tickets to the movies.

Fujitsu adopts flash memory for new tablets — Tablet PCs probably get dropped more than other computers, so Fujitsu has created two machines that store data by using flash memory rather than traditional hard drives. — The LifeBook P1610 and LifeBookB6210 are now available with either 16GB or 32GB flash drives.

Is VoIP an Excuse for Bad Voice Quality? — In a few hours, the annual Spring VON is going to kick off in San Jose, California. Hundreds of companies, big and small will hawk their wares, pundits will pontificate and a lot of people will talk about convergence.

BALLMER ON GOOGLE - UH OH — Late last week Steve Ballmer gave an speech at Stanford in which he stated that Google is a "one trick pony" - that trick being search, of course. He also noted that Google's staff growth is "insane" and called Google, in short, "cute." — Lordy, Steve.

Lycos, Early Search Engine, in a U.S. Remake as Jubii — Through a quirk of dot-com history, Lycos Europe cannot sell itself in the United States using its own once-famous name. Instead, the Internet service, partly owned by Bertelsmann of Germany and Telefónica of Spain …

Time Rich or Time Poor? — Broadly speaking, there are two types of internet users, Time Rich and Time Poor . I'd speculate that many of the readers of this blog fall into the Time Poor category, but the vast majority of internet users fall into the Time Rich category.

Researchers Track Down a Plague of Fake Web Pages — Tens of thousands of junk Web pages, created only to lure search-engine users to advertisements, are proliferating like billboards strung along freeways. Now Microsoft researchers say they have traced the companies and techniques behind them.

The Shape of Cinema, Transformed at the Click of a Mouse — FOR some time now, it has been possible to imagine a moment when you — yes, You, the Person of the Year, the ultimate arbiter of cultural relevance — will be able to watch whatever you want whenever you want in the setting of your choice.